


Monster Hunting Scrapbook

by EdgarAllenPoet



Series: Monster Hunting [fics about TAZ Amnesty] [8]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Barclay is a softie and he loves his wife so much, Body Worship, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Memories, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Scars, cobbclay, whumptober2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-21 15:55:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21077516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EdgarAllenPoet/pseuds/EdgarAllenPoet
Summary: Mama’s body was a map of hard-living, witness to events from decades of fighting and living and aching.  There were scars, some white and flat with age, some new enough to shine pink and angry still.  There were stretch marks, freckles, callouses from years of hard work, and permanent tan lines from years and years of the same summer routines.  Sometimes Barclay got lost staring.  To him, it was beautiful.





	Monster Hunting Scrapbook

**Author's Note:**

> whumptober prompts!! stitches, don't move, tear-stained, scars, pinned down, and stay with me
> 
> I love this ship so fucking much, you guys

Mama’s body was a map of hard-living, witness to events from decades of fighting and living and aching. There were scars, some white and flat with age, some new enough to shine pink and angry still. There were stretch marks, freckles, callouses from years of hard work, and permanent tan lines from years and years of the same summer routines. Sometimes Barclay got lost staring. To him, it was _beautiful_. 

He traced his fingertips over stretch marks, across her abdomen, just above her hips. They’d been younger when they met, her in her early thirties and him somewhere close behind, and she’d been brick-wall sturdy then too. Strong from years of people trying to shove her down. He’d seen them the first time during work, when she’d tugged her t-shirt up to wipe sweat from her face, flashing her stomach and sports bra and leaving him dumbfounded until Thacker coughed loud in his ear and startled him out of it. 

She was warm under his hands, soft in some places and rock solid in others. Her hips, moldable. Her biceps tight enough to bounce a quarter, well-worn muscle that would probably never deteriorate even if she could slow down enough to show it a good while of disuse. 

Her hands were iron, built by holding clubs and guns and chiseling tools. Her knuckles no longer split or bruised if she struck something, and the callouses on her hands were impenetrable. Her fingernails were kept short, either chewed or cut, often lined with charcoal or dirt or grease no matter how hard she scrubbed at them.

In the winter they smelled like lanolin and Vaseline from the bag balm he made her smear on her knuckles to keep them from chapping. She superglued her finger tips together when they bled regardless and swore when she mistakingly stuck the bottle to the bathroom sink. 

Her hair was dark, all of it. Thick and wavy on her head, stubborn against braids or any sort of taming, really. After that firefight, the first abomination with Aubrey and the rest of the new gang, she’d burnt all the hair off her arms, but it grew back the same-- dark and prominent. Fine hair encircled her breasts, trailed down her abdomen, met between her legs thick and corded. Her shins, her _thighs_, under her arms and barely there on her upper lip. It was _beautiful_. 

Barclay traced his fingers down her stomach, then up her arm to her shoulder, and over a scar there. It had healed crooked from shabby patchwork. He remembered that night vividly: 

His blood pounding in his ears, and the scent of blood _everywhere_. Thacker was gone, disappeared, and this was their first hunt just the two of them in a long, long while. 

The abomination struck faster than they were thinking, or it was early, or they were too busy mourning to pay attention. Barclay sat with Mama between his legs, seated on the floor and leaning her elbows onto the coffee table, talking him through the supplies in the first aid kit, through disinfection the needle and cleaning the wound. He’d seen it all before, but he was shook enough to be dumb. She kept patient as blood poured out of her and talked him through the process. 

She bit down the sleeve of her flannel, and Barclay patched her up with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking. She snapped at the residents who came to investigate, which was unlike her, and she’d apologized later. It took far longer than Barclay thought it ought to-- he’d sewn on patches before, it should be the same thing, it shouldn’t be _hard_\-- but blood made the skin slippery and it was hard, like piercing through leather, and with every pained noise that escaped her, he had to talk himself back down from the edge of a panic attack. 

When he’d finished, she’d shoved the table away and turned around stiffly, melting a bit when she caught a look of him. “Oh Barclay.” She said his name like it was something precious, and she climbed to her feet and dropped onto the couch next to him, cradling his jaw in her hands and wiping tears he hadn’t known were there from his face. She pulled him in against her, and he’d breathed into her bare skin hoping the scent of sweat would mask the scent of blood. 

It didn’t. 

There were other scars over her collar bone that weren’t his fault, and they were still rather new. Almost superficial. They’d heal and disappear within time. 

She hadn’t told him specifically, but he recognized the pattern of fingernails tearing through skin. She’d come back from the Wilds with a laundry list of injuries, both serious and trivial. 

The social worker at the hospital had interrogated him thoroughly when he’d brought her in, and while he was furious and terrified and so fucking tired, he understood. Those scratch marks were distinctly human. The bruises on her clearly from strikes and grabs. The mild concussion from being slammed against something. The broken ankle from a nasty sort of fall. 

He didn’t fault this woman for doing her job, though she seemed to agree after a good bit of investigating that 1. Mama wasn’t quite the picture of a battered wife, what with her six foot frame and her “go ahead and try me” disposition, and 2. Barclay didn’t have it in him to pull that kind of thing off and lie about it. 

Pull it off at all. 

He would _never_. 

He _couldn’t_. 

He thought about her and Thacker, out there in the wilds fighting to the death, and he automatically imagined them younger. Wrestling and throwing each other around the living room or the kitchen or the Goddamn woods, rubbing dirt in each other’s hair and taking turns pinning each other down, cursing each other the whole way. 

Wrestling was just another way of saying “I love you.” He couldn’t make himself imagine any alternative. 

Sometimes Barclay got lost staring. It was beautiful-- _she _was beautiful-- but the thought of her taking some of that damage was sickening.

The bright red mark at the base of her throat was mouth shaped and entirely his fault. The small hole under her bottom lip was a remnant from art school, some long-forgotten piercing. Her right ear was pierced too-- only the right one, Barclay had something matching when he was younger, before he’d met her, when statements like that had _meant something_, been a _code. _She didn’t wear earrings anymore, said they were too much hassle.

“What are you starin’ at me for?” she asked, and he pressed a kiss to her shoulder and smoothed his hand down her chest. 

“Roll over?” he asked, and she huffed at him before obliging, pillowing her head in her arms. He sat up, moving to straddle her thighs, and she sighed contentedly as he dug the heels of his hands into her lower back. 

Small scars were scattered over the skin there, from her shoulder blades down, and Barclay was shot back to the abomination that tore through the forest, smashing trees to mulch when it generated enough power to do so. That was years ago, when the kids were younger-- still _kids_\-- and Jake had gotten some kinda bug up his ass about _helping_. 

It’d been nearly too late when they found him, when the abomination reared back, and Mama tackled Jake to the ground and wrapped herself around him as the thing went _off_. The resulting explosion had dropped a tree on them, scratched Mama all to hell and knocked her unconscious, and Barclay had had to order Jake not to move-- not to give away the fucking hiding space the two of them had fallen into-- while he squared up with the beast single-handedly. 

He hadn’t killed it that night. It had disappeared into the woods, and he’d dug them outta the rubble and slung Mama over his back so he could carry her without fucking up her already fucked up skin. 

Jake had sprinted ahead of them, to fetch help and the first aid kit, and he’d looked so much younger than fifteen while he was curled up in the chair next to Mama’s bed, worrying himself sick and waiting for her to wake up, half afraid she was going to tear his head off, but even more scared that she wasn’t waking back up, despite everyone’s reassurances. 

They’d really done their best not to involve Jake and Dani with monster hunting.

“Enjoying the view?” Mama asked, and he realized that his hands had stilled and were just resting in the middle of her back. He jostled himself back into movement, squeezing her ribs briefly-- Mama bit off a laugh and threw and elbow at him, which he caught in one hand-- before flopping off of her and back onto the mattress, making it bounce. 

“Always,” he answered. 

“Cheesy.” 

He grinned at her, and she grinned back then rolled her shoulders in the way she always did when she was about to get out of bed. It was still pretty early in the night, she probably had things she could be doing. Was probably bored. He reached out and caught her hand, tangled their fingers together. 

“Stay with me?” he asked.

She met his eyes, scanned his face, and gave half of a grin before settling back down. She tugged, and he went to her, shifting at the instruction of her hand at his hip, and she tucked herself in close to his back and wrapped her arm around his stomach, trapping him in tight as the little spoon. Their skin stuck a bit where his bare back was pressed against her chest. She squeezed him, once tight, and he let out the breath he was holding. 

“You wanna be held?” she asked. Her hand slid over his stomach to his ribs, then down his side and around, cupping the front of his boxers gently but firmly. “Or you wanna be distracted?” He inhaled through his teeth. 

“Distract me.” She squeezed. He bit his lip. “Please.” 

“Roll over,” she ordered, hand back at his hip and shoving him onto his stomach. He laughed and pillowed his head on his arms. She bit into the meat of his shoulder, the muscle between his shoulder and his neck, smiling against his skin. He moaned into the mattress and thought about the mark that might be left there.


End file.
